Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

I fully agree with what Deputy Wallace is saying. Sector after sector in the domestic economy is targeted with initiatives in the budget. In a couple of weeks we will be able to discuss them when we implement them in the finance Bill. There are incentives targeted across the board from agribusiness to the food sector to the property business. We must get the domestic economy going again. We will not get people going back to work with the numbers we require until the domestic economy is booted up once more.

However, we cannot go back to where we were. Reverting to a property bubble will not solve our problems. We must go back to the economy we had from the mid to late 1990s, when we were very competitive, when we invested in skills and education and when almost 700,000 extra people went to work over six years.

Labour market figures are very interesting. In 2011, a total of 144,000 people left the live register to go back to work. It shows the enormous amount of change that took place. Other people lost their jobs and went onto the live register. This shows the flux and flexibility of the labour market when 144,000 left the live register and got jobs, yet a whole other tranche of people lost their jobs and went on it. If we could stop the losses, there are things happening in the economy that are encouraging.

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